troy spun it for the visit to other. they've had a less than harmonious past occupy wall street and the new york city police department have clashed since the movement began but now the n.y.p.d. has a different view of occupying we'll tell you what it is in just a moment. be careful what you text police departments here in the u.s. want permission to store all of your text messages for a two year period is this just another sign of big brother going too far. as congress and the president viktor over the upcoming fiscal cliff many inside the beltway say a path to the stable u.s. economic future can be found in the simpson bowles plan coming up five things you should know that's included in this plan.

it's friday december seventh four pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. well we've been today in syria where fears of chemical weapons have resulted in one american official after another declaring a red line against the country president obama hillary clinton leon panetta and a host of other american officials have threatened action if chemical weapons are used in the country but behind the curtain of rhetoric are real doubts of what weapon syria actually has and whether the u.s. is really willing to get involved in yet another conflict in the middle east r t international correspondent diane chicana and asks if the allegations are enough for military action. u.s. officials said intelligence agencies have detected that assad's government has been preparing its chemical weapons stockpiles for possible use the obama administration's message to syria the u.s. is ready to act if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons there will be

consequences and you will be held accountable there will be consequences. there will be consequences we have sent a an unmistakable message that this would cross a red line next how does america the media quickly picked up on the alarming news of the syrian government's alleged plans citing secret intelligence for fox news confirms that syrian troops now have the deadly nerve agent sarin gas weaponized and at the ready the syrian government flatly denied the possibility saying it would not use such weapons against its people. we would not commit suicide we feel there's a conspiracy to provide a pretext for any subsequent interventions in syria by these countries they're doing creasing pressure on syria the syrian government sure knows that if they use chemical weapons it would give nato and some of their arab neighbors who are itching to intervene in syria the green light to go ahead with their plans damascus

itself says it would be suicidal for them to do so but with the fear and the hype building up over the use of chemical weapons against civilians in syria it seems the u.s. might be preparing grounds to jump the gun on this one the jumping the gun scenario is not new for the u.s. almost ten years ago the bush administration confidently presented false evidence to invade iraq we have and descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails in beijing triggered a civil war that killed more than one hundred thousand innocent iraqis and years later all washington had to say about this was the president thought it was correct congress thought it was of course i regret that it turned out a lot of it was wrong in the run up to the iraq invasion to us media was instrumental in selling the case to the public the congress never had any proof ever present ever of weapons of mass destruction all came from tony blair to cheney and bush and congress who writes now that the u.s.

has drawn a red line on syria it has made it clear it's ready to take action but how i'm not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of. credible evidence that the assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people but suffice it to say we are certainly planning to. take action if that eventuality were to occur two american warships are already near the syrian coast with some. one thousand u.s. marines and dozens of fighter jets on board on top of that nato is sending american german and dutch batteries of patriot anti-aircraft missiles to turkey's border with syria meaning hundreds more u.s. and european troops will be deployed to the frontier nato says deploying patriot missiles along syria's borders is a defensive step to prevent syria from attacking turkey i don't think there's any

requirement whatsoever for patriot batteries on the ground in turkey again the patriot missiles are designed to really protect primarily against incoming theater ballistic missiles or aircraft the syrians are not going to attack the turks the turks of the most powerful military establishment in the region the largest army in nato and intervention in syria will be as bad if not worse than what we experienced in iraq the pentagon said they would need seventy five thousand troops to secure syria's weapons of mass destruction the question on everyone's mind is are they seriously considering that kind of a mess of intervention because that could mean another you rock coming soon and invasion that could be followed by years of bloody civil war in washington i'm going to check on. well here's a story about a bet you thought you'd never see occupy wall street activists in the new york police department are working together to lower crime rates the scene was different only a few short months ago you see video like this that right here this is flooded that

flooded the television screens last year when thousands of occupy protesters clashed in zuccotti park and around the city hundreds were arrested as the chaos and relations between the two have been rocky ever since but all that changed this october when hurricane sandy struck the coast of new york and new jersey the storm caused billions of dollars and manage unless numerous families homeless and battling dropping temperatures but hurricane sandy forced more than a path of destruction is paved the way for cooperation between the n.y.p.d. and the occupy movement as a result of the increased presence of occupy and other neighborhood non-profits crime rates have gone down normally conditions like the friggin storm caused looting muggings and other crimes but not this time the new york police source told the wash the new york post quote this crisis allows us to remove politics and

differences we had to do our jobs and come to the aid of people and we all rose to the occasions so is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship to answer all that and more i'm joined by new york from new york by occupy activist goldie hey there goldie so let's start off by talking about this matter of more physis i mean the police were very confrontational confrontational with the occupy movement at the ending. yeah well what's happening right now is everyone very hurt by hurricane sandy and i think everyone's working really hard together to help those in need that's what we're doing we got off the ground running the day after the storm to help people. and the police are doing the same as far as the data on lowering the crime rate. i'm sure that's because everyone's really really busy just licking their wounds and helping other people in our case but instead in situations like this what we've seen before not only in the

us with hurricane katrina and other places is that looting stu all up you said it's a matter of desperation for these people and if so how is your organization working to to correct that situation. again we're just we're just helping people. i would just i'm not really sure where the where the data comes from we are working . closely with the n.y.p.d. whenever they help people where that where they're also so i i'm not really here i know in red hook that a special situation where they're working even closer with the n.y.p.d. . but i think it's better to go ahead and talk about what exactly you are doing with the n.y.p.d. how these coordination efforts are happening and how you guys really come together in the past month. i'm based out of the occupy sandy hub in staten island and we have the n.y.p.d. retired n.y.p.d. and its hard firefighters right next to us they cook for us and for the whole

community. we work and say hello with them each and every day i think it's just under duress this is what sort of humanity does and unfortunately as things get better the will be will be new new strains introduced especially when it comes to where we come from which is occupy wall street we advocate for poor people and usually it's against people that run the system so as we're seeing more and more houses condemned and the possibility of eminent domain and developers coming in. you're going to meet occupy sandy will morph back into occupy wall street and you'll see us back the way we are when we advocate for poor people and talk about the n.y.p.d. and what i was specifically they can learn from the occupy movement i mean obviously your movement has knows how to organize it had to do it in the past you were able to support yourselves as you call the park by dividing up donated food

and blankets so what has or can the n.y.p.d. and other nonprofit organizations learn from the occupy movement. well it seems like the whole last year we were training for this moment because we know how to operate with very little and as soon as we got donations and resources that seemed substantial we were out which is nothing compared to what the red cross has but we were out on the streets doing what we do which is providing like direct actions to help people what. the n.y.p.d. when there is no state emergency system is what we found on the ground and through all these meetings where were all the different groups meet together like fema the red cross we've met with them repeatedly we have yet to see sort of an emergency plan what they have is a bunch of applications that they want people to fill out and they seem to have some kind of medium and possibly long term plan but that's we haven't gotten there yet we're still in emergency mode where people need shelter they need they need

warmth they need power and none of these things people have in a lot of the affected areas so that there doesn't seem to be an emergency system in place i hate to tell you but. so far we're filling a huge void out there which is providing people with with basic needs and basic routes to take to get the things that they need to be slightly more comfortable and all the while we're talking about this i notice that you're also wearing a yellow occupy sandy badge on tell us quickly where people can donate to if they choose to do south yeah you can go to occupy sandy dot org and all or all information is there including you can donate supplies or through your wedding registry or money through through our accounts on there we're all very proud of this it always gets a good fist bump from fema the red cross because they know the work we're doing absolutely and so let's also talk about what you exactly how to learn from the new york police department if anything i mean you've been working side by side with

these nonprofits and also with the new york police department do you think that any of your experience from what i'm hearing has contributed to being able to translate into the occupy movement is economy park and beyond just this hurricane sandy. i mean a lot of these organizations are coming to us asking asking us for our information and our data from canvassing because we were first on the ground. and the red cross actually said hey we don't know where to go because you guys didn't tell us for some reason we were supposed to tell them where to go when really it's their job what so what they can learn i'm not really sure how to apply this to a government that there's a lot of red tape but the government we just get in there and help people because we can we're nimble we're small we're quick. what they could learn is to actually be a little more nimble and quick it took them weeks to raise to to you know forego like osha and other sort of contingencies that were placed on workers. they can they can

just move a little a little faster and provide for heaters from the government from the government from fema from the red cross all of them refuse teeters because a lot of people some people have power they don't have heat so providing these basic things for people it seems to be very hard for any of these huge agencies to do and they all they all apologize and say nice job. and we'll leave it at that all right occupy activists goldie's thank you for your work and for everything you're doing out there and i will see more of you i'm sure in the coming days and weeks that is occupy activists golding and you can see him at gorilla shack dot com. first law enforcement officials wanted said the ability to listen in on your private phone conversations then they wanted access to your e-mail and internet activities now they're asking for access to your text messages the major cities police chiefs association which represents sixty three large police forces in the

country those of the largest ones have submitted a proposal to congress that requires wireless providers to record and store information about americans private text messages for at least two years that is to say they want every text message from every user stored for at least two years now i don't know about you but i text a lot so imagine a stockpile of text messages that wireless providers will be forced to store that's two trillion text messages that were sent in the u.s. last year all lone so put aside the ethical and moral aspects for a minute is this type of data retention even possible here to break down all of this and more as our web producer and your blake straight from the barbershop you know you don't text me that much anymore though i don't text you that much when you usually g. chat so i thought if my far enough in that so that's a horse of a whole other color if you want to start talking about that kind of surveillance but you know this is so something that's worth talking about today are i will why

do you break it down for us i mean how first of all let's just start with the storage space is it even possible to store this much information yeah sure i mean given this is just little pieces of text but right now we're talking about six billion text messages in the united states every single day it's like two trillion a year according to statistics from twenty ten twenty eleven i believe so it's a lot of information but we do know there's the whole n.s.a. data center being built over in utah and people say they're just collecting information does it even know how to handle it right now but law enforcement says that there is this information that if it was collected and it was maintained somewhere it would help with a lot of investigations because we weren't. we know right now that law enforcement agencies can now access all sorts of phone records thing is a lot of these providers carry. they hold onto the tax data but sometimes they don't have to and congress if the major chiefs association has their way congress will be forced to say ok look telecoms you are going to have to hold on to the status for two years or pretty much is going to make it you know mandated that it

exists so that from there they can do whatever the hell they want to do with it and so yes they are they all have the potential of being able to store this but i know that certain wireless carriers like t. mobile and eighteen for instance choose not to go to i thought i was in the impression that they didn't have the capacity to be able to store i mean we're talking about a lot of information there is actually if you go online i know. i'm sorry so you put out a form last year going over the major telecom providers and what their own personal retention policies are when i actually think that form in a full screen if we can go ahead and bring that up and talks about which providers in particular actually store it and as you can see on their rise in wireless stores there's for up to three to five days t. mobile cingular sprint and nextel choose not to and here's the whopper virgin mobile stores there's for ninety days they definitely take the cake so i have a little story that's a text message content and it's really important to know what is saved and what

isn't because it's not necessarily the content that can really help out police here we've got a look at the metadata right now it's really easy for law enforcement to go ahead and get a court order that will allow them to see e-mails not necessarily the content of the e-mails but this metadata to see where information is going to who it's coming from to whom it's going to what the subject says where it was sent from that information is a lot easier to get than the actual contents of emails so when we look at text messages right now all these telecom providers they all have different retention policies about how they handle and how they maintain this metadata as well as the actual hard content and all of them you know. sure a lot of them don't want to the actual content but a lot of them all of them rather hold on to this the actual metadata for years in fact t. mobile five years eight hundred singular five to seven years that information you know says you know mega little to send a text message for andrew blake on december whatever date is seven three or so that

information could be accessed by by congress by investigators by law enforcement if they all have their way but but right now it's not mandated telecom's can do whatever the hell they want to do with this information but like you said we have this group the major chiefs their major cities chiefs of police association and that's officers from the new york l.a. chicago miami there are asking for this and at the same time other groups national district attorneys association national sheriffs association they are also there in their head into this and saying look congress you should consider doing this of course it's not going to matter until congress actually goes and revamp the electronic communications privacy act which is going to happen till next year but it could at least be brought up and can be put on the table in its serious and which ones are they trying to store in particular the metadata or everything that's involved in them or is it clear it's really not we're still trying to figure out what's happening and we have a lot to learn about the electronic communications privacy act and you know in the grand scheme of things this actually isn't a total loss because there was actually that the e.c.p.a.

has as we call it up in the scene the e.c.p.a. had a really great victory last week when it was decided that if the law enforcement agent wants to access someone's email that's older than one hundred eighty days they're going to have to start getting warrants so when the e.c.p.a. goes up for renewal and if this long is that passes that's great for privacy advocates it's a really good step for americans who want to actually protect their online data but isn't it good to trade that off with having to lose cell phone privacy you know we'll see but it's something serious and it's we're just starting to get wind of it now declan mccullagh scene that broke the news the other day and we're still following up on it and our t. actually reached out to a number of wireless. providers are reaching out to t. mobile varieties and things like that we also reached out to the cia and i do want to bring up a quote from them their statement they say that this issue contains important privacy and law and enforcement concerns and stakeholders in those areas as well as congress are the appropriate parties to assess those considerations now c.t.a.

of course is a wireless group it's an industry trade group that represents a wide variety of interests on behalf of international wireless telecommunications companies so talk about is that really is it really in the hands of congress and the stakeholders to be to be able to decide this or should more people be worried about what can come of these text messages well i mean it's up to congress but it's up to the people who elect those people that are going to make those decisions so ultimately congress is going to have to go ahead and say this is what we want to do because that's what the people are telling us to do when we saw with like sopa and pipa last year there was such such such a huge blowback over what that would do for not necessarily privacy but just the information sharing on the internet that those concerns were heard and you know just recently we saw that there's been a huge changes to the n.d.a. for next year and we know how crazy the support was to try to abolish the death and detention provisions so you can always make the argument that oh you know washington doesn't work the lawmakers on the hill are idiots but the same point if

you have to go back and say ok well they will listen to the people if the people make their message heard loud and clear so there's a there's a chance that you know while this is up to congress that if people actually say look this is my dad i'm going to hold onto it myself they will get that then again there will always be other alternative providers you will always be able to find a way around this as far if history is any precedent congress is always going to be like five steps behind technology so keep your fingers crossed that's going to stay that way well we're going to watch and see how this all unfolds are so so many things are up in the air and you blake our web producer thank you so much for joining us or. all right despite a decent jobs report coming out today there's been another big there is still a big questions over the looming economy and the fiscal crisis that is whether congress will pass a plan before december thirty first to avoid the name the nation coming to the so-called fiscal cliff the question of what to do about the struggling economy is certainly not a new one two and a half years ago two men former u.s.

senator alan simpson a republican and former white house chief of staff for president clinton erskine bowles the democrats came up with a possible solution what they came up with is this it's known as the to those outside of the beltway as the simpson bowles of the bowles simpson is plan whichever way you want to see it and despite falling short of passing it often took center stage and talks about the economy for the most part of the for the most of this year especially during the presidential campaign governor what about simpson bowles support simpson bowles simpson bowles the president should grab that i mean do you support some symbol i have my own plan it's not the same as simpson bowles but in my view the president should have grabbed it if you want to make some adjustments to it take it go to congress fight for it that's what we've done made some adjustments to it and we're putting it forward before congress right now but even though most have now heard of the plan very few people actually know what's in

it our chief political correspondent christy infrasound looks through the plan and picked out five things that we think you should know about simpson bowles. erskine bowles is a sixty seven year old democrat from north carolina and these days he's often out and about touring the country with his sidekick eighty one year old republican alan simpson the odd couple chaired the so-called super committee back in two thousand and ten which president obama created to find a balance between republican and democratic plans to solve the debt crisis now that committee ended up as a less than super it ultimately didn't even approve its own report about simpson and bowles are keeping their plan alive or at least trying to by selling it as the last best hope for an ailing economy. now the first thing you need to know is that it is fair to ask whether this is truly a great compromise since the planet rests on the assumption that the bush tax cuts for those making more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year will end even though simpson bowles plan takes that as

a given current republican legislators are less willing to immediately let that exploration take place in fact that happens to be issue number one for republicans who see letting the cuts expire as synonymous to raising tax rates. number two simpson bowles raises the gas tax by fifteen cents now this is self-explanatory but not widely known raising the gas tax could be seen as a big blow to those big oil companies but if i had to bet companies like exxon mobil which by the way made forty one billion dollars in profit last year probably are going to let those profits go down it would more likely mean customers paying more at the pump. third half of the program cuts in the original simpson bowles plan have already been achieved so taking a look at the map you see of the two point nine trillion dollars of program cuts about one point five trillion have already been announced it looks like congress at

least was listening to that part of the plan. all right for social security may no longer be the third rail in american. the text since in bold makes three main changes to social security it increases the taxable maximum on income to ninety percent of all income which would raise two hundred thirty eight billion dollars over the next decade it also uses a different measure of inflation to slow cost of living adjustments and it also raises the retirement age once again now for decades after social security was first implemented back in one nine hundred thirty seven the retirement age stayed at sixty five if they went to sixty six and there is a plan in the works already to get the increase up to sixty seven but some some bold changes that to sixty eight in twenty fifty and sixty nine and twenty seventy five and the fifth thing you should know in discussing ways to improve the economy and create revenue alan simpson and erskine bowles are making a little bit of revenue themselves

a new york times recently reported that the proof of their appeal is that some business groups pay them forty thousand dollars each for appearance simply for the honor of hearing the discuss budget and baselines as if they're not totally earning their money check this out stop the grammy your breakfast and tweeting your first world problems and getting on you tube so you can see gangnam style. all right so alan simpson doing the gangnam style dance or try to get young people involved in a campaign focused on cutting the national debt that was pretty amazing it's part of what they call the can kicks back in reference of course to congress kicking the can down the road when it comes to coming up with permanent solutions to economic problems but these are just a few interesting tidbits from the plan that everyone seems to be talking about but most people aren't totally sure why in washington christine for south r.t.

. all right capital account is up next on r t let's check in with lauren lasorda see what's on today's agenda larning we talking about the november jobs report of course we have to address them because that headline number just looks too good seven point seven percent but why did unemployment go down because more people left the labor force this is one of those trends that we see happen on and off from month to month it just kind of depends reared its head again so what does this mean about the macro economic outlook and also other areas of the economy that matters such as housing because obviously if you don't have a job if you don't have a good job you're not going to be in the market for a house that will talk about both also the ethyl and the meets next week some are predicting more bond purchases to quote unquote support the economy but could it actually be doing the opposite we'll talk to john butler about that coming up in just a few minutes all right that's coming up on the capital account just about two minutes but that's going to do it for us for the news so go ahead and follow our stories go to youtube dot com slash r t america check them out or check out our web site r t

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he feels. elite. in it. bill.